Car maker Kia Motors have commissioned a report called “cleaner driving” which reveals some interesting and surprising details about how congestion affects us all.
Everyone hates traffic jams and according to the Kia report, commuters spend more than 2 full days a year stuck in stand-still traffic each year. How they come up with these figures I don’t know, but they are fun, if a little sobering also.
If you commute by car and Kia say that’s 71% of us, on an average 47 minute journey, we will spend 12 minutes either driving below 5 mph, or completely at a stand still.
Around 62% of us say we “grow angry” when we hit a queue, with one in three of us are admitting to having experienced ‘road rage’ in heavy traffic, although I am not sure if that means we were the victim, or if we were the one’s dolling the road rage out.
44% of us say they are regularly late for work, due to traffic (try getting up earlier)
49% say they’ve narrowly avoided a traffic related accident, whilst 19% of us were not so lucky, admitting to having a bump, or minor accident whilst driving on their way to work.
Interestingly, 66% of commuters admit to speeding to make up time when the traffic clears (there’s a surprise)
Despite all this, it seems we wouldn’t have it any other way as 30% of drivers rule out public transport because it’s too inconvenient and a huge 72% say they value the privacy and space they get by driving to work as opposed to using public transport.
Still, however bad you think you’ve got it, the survey suggests that the A556 in Manchester is the worst road in the country. 50,000 drivers use the 4 mile stretch of road each day and between them, they waste half-a-million hours a year sitting in the queue and that sounds stunning, but in fact, it isn’t all that bad as that equates to 10 hours per year, per driver and on a 240 day working year, that’s just 2.5 minutes a day! So what’s everyone moaning about.
